I’ve noticed a plugin doing the rounds of the Wordpress blogs recently called Highlight Author Comments. It helps to achieve an effect previously only possible by altering your theme: different styling for the author’s comments. I’ve decided to compare it to the theme alteration and look at when each is most appropriate.

Using the plugin is very simple. Once installed it provides an option page where styles can be entered and saved. It will take any number of CSS styles in inline format.

Adding styles to the plugin

The plugin works by wrapping the comment content in a div tag with those inline styles applied so there is quite a lot of flexibility as to the styling options including background colours, images, borders, type changes, and position changes.

Theme Alterations

The plugin and the theme alterations work on exactly the same principle: for each comment check whether the e-mail address entered is that of the posts author, and if so applied a different set of styles of code. At it’s most basic:

if ($comment->comment_author_email == get_the_author_email()) {
    echo '<h3 class="author-comment">Author Comment</h3>';
} else {
    echo '<h3 class="comment">'.$comment->comment_author.' says:</h3>';
}

When to use

If you are using a ready made theme then the plugin is ideal. It helps you make the comments stand out very easily. It would also seem to be best if the style changes need only be quite minor, and don’t require any other parts of the template to change. Adding a subtle gradient to the background and changing the colour of the text would be easy.

If you have a more ambitius nature and want to change the template around the comment, such as the header or the way the date is shown, then changing the theme is likely to be more appropriate.

More details about the plugin can be found at All things seen and unseen.

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